Mill Avenue Vexations: Eye for Trouble
by Jenna Hirschman
Summary: Vex's cousin Annie gets a crash course in roommates, dating, and demonology when she uncovers a secret society's dangerous plot to bring chaos to Ann Arbor during her first semester at college. Mill Avenue Vexations fanfiction.
1. The 49th Eye

**The 49th Eye**

A few minutes before her first college class at the University of Michigan, Annie Harrow twisted in her sleep. Ursula and Alice, her new roommates in 216 Green House, were long gone. All three alarm clocks that Annie set the night before were ringing, but she was trapped in a dream.

The dream was a memory.

Annie and her cousin Victoria stood shoulder-to-shoulder facing a giant mirror. Annie saw their mismatched reflections in the mirror. Victoria was older than Annie, seventeen, but shorter. Annie thought Vicks was story-book beautiful, with ivory skin and raven black hair cropped at her chin. She wore her gothed-up school uniform, a button-down black shirt with a studded collar and a knee-length pleated black skirt. Victoria wore big black boots and a wallet chain around her waist. A mostly full leather bag hung from the chain and clicked when she moved. She was crazy and tough.

Next to Victoria, Annie looked like an overgrown kid. She was thirteen and already 5'10", but all her height was in her legs. She had the opposite complexion from her cousin: tan, rosy cheeks, shiny blond hair down down to her knees, loose and a little knotted. Her mirror self was a little kid out of community theater -- standing on stilts, wearing a Rapunzel wig. And that was a pretty accurate reflection of how she felt.

Victoria nodded. "This is it."

Annie shook her head. "It's just an ordinary mirror."

Victoria shook her head and reached for Annie's hand. "You'll see," she said.

Annie clutched her cousin's hand.

"Are you ready?" Victoria asked.

Annie nodded.

Together, two fists acting as one, they punched at the center of the mirror. Annie flinched just before their fingers would have connected with the surface, but she never felt the glass. Their joined hands plunged into the mirror.

Their reflections vanished, replaced by the true image of what was in the mirror: the head of a monster. It looked like scorpion with a giant head, giant stinger, and normal-sized body. The eyes were empty sockets. The mouth was open wide, holding a glittery eye the size of a big marble. The eye stared at the girls. The monster chittered and scuttled a little, bringing its stinger up.

"Now!" Victoria shouted.

The scorpion thrust its stinger toward their exposed arms. At the same time Annie and Victoria slammed their hands down as hard on the scorpion's thorax, just below the head. The force of the blow opened the scorpion's jaw. The stinger plunged into Victoria's arm. The eyeball popped out, then the scorpion hissed and vanished. Victoria broke the hand grip and yanked her arm out of the mirror.

The eyeball rolled backwards into the depths of the mirror. Annie slammed her hand down on top of it and pulled it out of the mirror. She pocketed it and grinned, then remembered Victoria'd been hurt.

Victoria was sucking poison out of the wound and spitting it on the ground. The floor sizzled were the poison hit. Victoria's lips were getting burned too, her blood mixing with the poison. Annie bit her lip to keep herself from puking.

"Are you okay cuz?" she asked.

Victoria paused between mouthfuls. "Fle-th- wound."

A few minutes later, Victoria spat out the last of the poison. She unlatched the leather bag from her wallet chain and handed it to Annie. "Do what my mom said: put in the new one then count them up."

While Annie fumbled with the bag, Victoria fished a tube of black lipstick out of a pocket and covered her lips in it.

Annie finished counting. There were forty-eight eyeballs in the bag and one in her pocket. "Forty-nine demon eyeballs. Seven times seven. That's all of them." She watched her cousin perfecting the line of her lipstick. "Doesn't putting lipstick on right now hurt?" she asked.

"The poi-th-on numbed everything it tou-th-ed," Vex grinned. She patted Annie's head. "Time to fini-th- it off," Victoria said.

Victoria pulled a small tube of kosher salt out of another pocket. She drew a thin circle on the ground with the salt. "Dump the bag out into the circle. Don't break the circle."

Annie carefully emptied the 48 eyeballs into the salt circle. She tucked her hands into her pockets, wrapping her fingers tightly around the 49th eyeball. It was cool and warm at the same time, and very smooth. She liked it. She wanted to keep it. A trophy, a souvenir, something to remind her of this adventure and her amazing demon hunter cuz after next month, when her parents' divorce would be finalized and she'd be moving to Michigan with her mom. She probably wouldn't see any of her Phoenix relatives -- dad, Uncle Vince, Aunt Gwen, or Vicks -- again until somebody died or got married; forever. The eyeball would remind her of them.

Victoria stared at the circle for a minute. "You got them all?" she asked, firmly.

Annie nodded enthusiastically, spinning the 49th eyeball round in her hand.

"Good. Let's do this together." Victoria took Annie's hand and together they spoke the incantation that would shatter 49 Eyed Scorpion's corporeal form and send its essence back to Demonland. Victoria said it wasn't really called Demonland, but it had a lot of "s" sounds and she couldn't say it right now.

The 48 eyes in the circle watched intently as the girls spoke. Then they shattered into dust. A smoky red haze rose up from them and then descended through the floorboards.

The 49th eye, the one in Annie's pocket, whispered in her mind, "Thanks. You've done me a big boon, Annie Harrow. I never liked being just one of the 49 Eyed Scorpion's eyes. Now I can start my solo career. I'll never forget you."

Annie gulped. She wondered if the demon eye could hear her thoughts, and she hoped so. She thought at it, "I've got your corporeal form. You're stuck and can't do anything except be my trophy."

The eye thought some emotions back at her. Annie figured it was trying to say "if this eyeball had a lid, it would wink at you." Finally, it did say, "You keep it, honey. I'll get a new one." Annie couldn't see it, but she knew the life went out of the eye at that moment. From then on, it was just a marble decorated as a glass eye with a red pupil.

She kept it as a trophy. She'd even used it as a marble to play Chinese checkers. It was one of the many shiny things she kept next to her bed.

As soon as the memory ended, Annie sat bolt upright. She reached over to the windowsill where she kept her favorite things. She grabbed the eye from its stand, cradling it in both hands. Of its own volition, it swung around and stared at her. It projected the same emotional sensation as it had just before it went dead: if I had an eyelid, I'd wink at you.

She gulped.

The 49th Eye whispered in her mind, "Annie. You're going to be late for class. If you don't get out of bed now, you'll miss the chance to meet your archenemy."

Annie heard all three of her alarm clocks ringing. She reached out to turn them off. The motion finally woke her up. She was tangled in her sheets, covered in sweat. Her hair was a mess of damp knots. She glanced at the 49th Eye. It was as dead and glassy as it had been for the past 7 years.

It was 9:55. She was going to be late for her 10am class across campus. She put on clean underwear and scrambled into yesterday's outfit. She jammed all of her hair into an unseasonably warm hat. She was reached to open the door when a strong, unreasonable urge swept her. She wanted to take the eye with her today. She didn't know why she wanted it, but she knew she didn't have time to muse on it. She grabbed it from its stand and tucked it in her pocket, then to her first class of college.


	2. Witchcraft 101

Annie burst out of her dorm onto Willard Street and ran three blocks to Angell Hall. The city and the university kept the streets on campus open to cars, but during the day foot traffic travelled faster. She darted between students ambling down East University and cars inching through the intersection at South University. Her eyes headed for coffee at Espresso Royale, but her legs kept going toward class.

She glanced up at the giant clock tower overshadowing campus. 10:01. She might miss as little as ten minutes of class if she kept running as fast as she could -- _no problem!_ -- and if she could find Auditorium C without slowing down. _Big if_.

She ran into the Angell Hall lobby, jumping over a stacked display of newspapers, and racing into the labyrinth of the building where the U held most undergraduate humanities and social science classes. Annie had been to the Auditoriums during orientation, and she thought they were on the ground floor near the lobby. She headed straight back into the building along a main hallway that looked down into the sunken computer lab, ignoring eight stairwells and five ramps leading off to different floors and newer parts of the building.

She rounded the corner and saw Auditorium C. The auditoriums had the kind of doors that swing both ways, the ones you can run into and push open with your shoulder. She kept running, planning to jog into lecture.

At the exact moment her arm connected with the door, she heard someone shout "Stercumzarbaskatamerde!" and a tremendous force hit the door from the other side. The door swung outward at Annie, ramming her arm and knocking her down to one knee.

_Like I said_, she thought, _Big If_. Hopelessly late now, she decided to rest for a minute, to collect her breath. She looked up to see who or what had knocked her akimbo.

She found herself staring past a pair of stylish glasses into a pair of striking hazel eyes; the hazel composed of a well-defined inner ring the color of midsummer in Michigan and an outer-ring of gray streaked with golden brown. The face in possession of the eyes was just a handspan or two away from hers. A warm gust of exhaled air brushed her nose. It smelled like cinnamon.

The eyes belonged to a heartthrob. His face carved from sandstone, sun kissed, cleft chin covered in just-the-right amount of stubble to look careless. Perfect cheekbones. Shiny dark hair sprinkled with a few grays, gently rolling. He was older than Annie, but not old enough to be a full professor. And unusual those eyes -- she looked into them again. They were looking back at her with grave concern.

"Pardon me. I didn't look for you before I opened the door. Are you hurt?" the man spoke in a rich tenor choked up with sincere worry.

Annie started to laugh, but she was still panting, and the two combined in her lungs into coughing. Trying to laugh, hack, and breathe at the same time was too much for her balance. She dropped her hands to the floor, grinning and wincing. She heard something pop out of her pocket and plink onto the floor. _Hope its nothing childish, weird, or embarrassing -- wait, that's hopeless. Just hope he doesn't notice it, _she thought. It started to roll away. The man slammed his hand down on top of it.

He must've thought she really was hurt. After he'd stopped the rolling object, he grabbed her and scooted her over to lean against a cool cinder block wall. Once she was propped up, he vanished for a second and returned, holding a little gray Nalgene bottle to her lips. She sipped it daintily, then grabbed the bottle from him and gulped the rest down. She closed her eyes and concentrated on gaining voluntary control of her lungs. When the water was gone, she thought she could speak again.

Annie opened her eyes to see him looking at a small object in his cupped hands. He turned back to her with a broad, heart-melting smile.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Annie Harrow," she answered.

"Annie, it's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Mikolaj Adamczak. You dropped a treasure. I'm going to return it to you now," he said.

He extended his closed hand to her.

She opened her hand. Mikolaj dropped something small into it. Round, marble-sized. It gave off heat and cool at the same time. The eye. Annie looked at him suspiciously for half a second, but then she relaxed. _Treasure? That was just him being cute_. It looked like an ordinary marble -- _okay, okay, a morbid marble_ -- but nothing more unusual than that. Still, she had a strong urge to hide it. She closed her fist securely around it.

"And now I believe you have something of mine," he said.

She missed a beat, then realized he meant the water bottle. She handed it to him. "Thanks," she said.

Mikolaj stood up and offered her a hand. She took it and clambered to her feet, deftly tucking the eye in her pocket. Her legs protested bearing her weight, reminding her of her race to class. She didn't hear any sounds coming from Auditorium C. _Pointless race_, she thought to herself. She didn't know where class was, but it clearly wasn't in an empty auditorium.

Giving up on that lost cause, she flicked her eyes back to Mikolaj. Now that he was standing up, she could tell for sure from his clothes that he was a graduate student or a young professor: undergrads did not dress for class in slacks, jackets, button-downs, and wacky ties decorated with stylized numerals: 273, 364, 455, 546 and so forth. She didn't recognize a pattern in the numbers, but she guessed it was a math gag, like finding the Fibonacci Sequence everywhere. For all she knew, it was the Fibonacci Sequence.

"Where were you headed?" he asked.

"I thought I was headed to Auditorium C," she said, kicking the door. "But it's empty."

"What class are you trying to find?"

"Anthropology 332: Sociocultural Perspectives on Witchcraft and Sorcery from 3750 BC through 1750 with Dr. Murray."

"Ah," he said, smiling again. _What pearly teeth. _Annie thought she might drool, and felt a twinge of exasperation with herself for feeling it.

Mikolaj pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket. "Now that I look at it for a second time, this paper says you're looking for Auditorium C in Tisch Hall."

Annie groaned. "Oh, bother. Where the hell is Ti -- hey, why do you have a piece of paper that says where my class is?"

"This is my schedule. I'm headed for the same class," Mikolaj replied.

"Oh," Annie said, staring at her fingers. She was surprised that he was attending her class, did graduate students ever take 300 level classes? With feigned misery, she continued: "I guess I should try to find it."

She paused to give him time to say something. _What are you expecting from him? A pony ride?_ Her inner voice rolled its inner eye at her.

He watched her but his mouth didn't even twitch, so she continued more cheerfully: "If I get a candy bar and a bottle of water from the lobby before I set off, I might live long enough to find my way through the maze by the time lecture meets next week. Care to place a bet in my favor? Or maybe against me?"

Mikolaj held up his empty hands. "I would not want to get on your bad side in a contest of skill, Annie. But I have nothing to put up for stakes in your favor, so let's play a different game: I do have something valuable; I know the way to class. Walk with me."

Annie grinned at her feet. Mikolaj lead her outside the complex into a bright and breezy September day. He looked even sexier in the sunlight. She regretfully followed him back into the dark maze through a doorway labelled Tisch Hall. The Tisch Hall auditoriums were directly off the lobby. They paused outside the door to Auditorium C.

"Will we get in trouble for being late?" she asked, idly. She tucked her fingers into her pocket and rolled the eye around in her left hand.

"You like trouble?" he asked.

She blushed, looked away. "Yeah, I like trouble." She looked back again.

"How fortunate, because you've got an eye for it. Let's go in."

Mikolaj pushed open the door for her.

She slipped in ahead of him. The room was dimly lit and chockful of murmuring, chattering, hollering students, except for the brightly lit stage, which was empty. Everyone quieted and looked at the door as Annie and Mikolaj entered. Annie didn't see a single empty seat until she noticed Ursula, one of her roommates, who had saved her a seat.

Annie turned toward Mikolaj to see where he'd sit, but he strode purposefully past her. He walked up the center aisle and mounted the stage. He stood dead center and looked out across the audience straight at her. He made sure she was meeting his gaze before he spoke in a smooth presentation voice that filled the entire room.

"Good morning. Professor Murray's flight from London was delayed. I'm Mikolaj Adamczak, your GSI. You've found your way to Anthropology 332. Most of you are upperclassmen, but I know there's at least one freshman in the room, so I say this now for your benefit: Classes at Michigan start 10 minutes after the posted time, so if you don't belong here you still have a little time to escape."

Mikolaj paused and looked down expectantly. A few students hastily stood up and rushed out of the room past Annie.

When they were gone, Mikolaj refocused on her and continued. "As I said, I'm your GSI -- that's graduate student instructor for you freshmen -- Mikolaj Adamczak. Call me Miko. Pull up a chair and join the class."

Annie realized a heartbeat late -- when he paused -- that it was an imperative directed at her. She gave Ursula a fleeting smile of greeting, and took the seat next to her.

In the same instant Annie sat down, Ursula pointed at her notepad, where she'd written, "Sizzling hot!" with a giant arrow pointing to the GSI.

Annie looked Mikolaj over again, starting from his polished boots (which were at eye-level now that he was on stage and she was sitting down) working her way up to his crazy tie. She intended to keep going, but her eye caught on something dangling over his tie, glittering in the stage lights. A spherical pendant hanging on a thin golden chain. Not just round: perfectly round.

Annie's pulse began racing. She felt her heart pressing on her bra. Her feet twitched and she had to work to stay in her seat. She didn't need to squint to see the design on the pendant, she recognized it even from a distance. It was an eye, almost the same as the eye on the morbid marble in her pocket. She dove her hand into her pocket and seized the eye, just to make sure it was still there. Annie's heart told her to run. Annie's feet agreed. But the morbid marble in her pocket whispered joyously, "Game on!" and all the rest of Annie's anatomy agreed.

Adrenaline drunk, she met Mikolaj's gaze head-on.

Miko beamed at her. "Welcome to Witchcraft 101."


	3. Threats and Innuendo

Annie made up her mind on the spot: she was going to steal Mikolaj Adamczak's scorpion-eye necklace.

She toyed with her scorpion-eye marble in her left hand, but the fingers of her right hand were itching to get a hold of the necklace. She reasoned that Miko's pendant might belong to an active monster, in which case, Miko was in danger. Even if the GSI had some real magical skill, he was in over his head dealing with the 49 Eyed Scorpion -- or anything like it.

_I might be in over my head too,_ Annie thought. _Five years ago, I was just helping Vicks, and even Vicks was following Aunt Gwen's instructions. _

November 1997 came back to Annie in a flash:

Annie burst into Aunt Gwen's apartment brandishing a bright pink flyer from school, interrupting yet another divorce-cheerleading session. Aunt Gwen was hugging Annie's mom, Kate, who was crying. Vicks was filling a a pitcher of water at the sink. Annie didn't want her parents to get divorced; didn't want to live with her mother's parents in Michigan; didn't want to see her mom cry.

She had slapped the flyer down on the kitchen table, and announced, with maybe a hair too much manufactured glee: "Four kids from my school died over the weekend!!!! They say it was from scorpion venom, but I think it was something else because only babies and grandmas and midgets die from scorpion stings." Kate sobbed. Vicks paused at the sink. Aunt Gwen gently disentangled from Kate to take a look at the flyer.

Gwen had pursed her lips. She said, "Annie, I think you're on to something. There are no scorpions in Arizona with strong enough venom to kill healthy junior high kids. A single death might have been caused by an allergic reaction to the venom, but most people aren't allergic. Vict -- sorry, honey -- everyone, Vicks is going by Vex now. Vex, you and I need to look into this."

Annie snatched the flyer away from Aunt Gwen. "Me too," she said.

Aunt Gwen looked askance at Kate, but Kate was still sobbing. Gwen shrugged. "Why not? You're the one who spotted the problem in the first place. Vex, Annie: get a copy of the_ Sun Times _for Saturday, Sunday, and contact information for these families."

Over the next week, Kate finalized her divorce, Gwen directed, the girls ran her errands and kicked ass. That was how they figured out what the 49 Eyed Scorpion was up to. It got its strength from drinking human blood primed a few days in advance with its own toxin. Just twenty minutes after an idiot magus summoned it, ten minutes after it broke out of the magus's epic fail of a warding circle, and five minutes after she died from its venom, the 49 Eyed Scorpion hatched a plot to invenomate the entire Phoenix water supply. But it was weak from the summoning, so its venom wasn't strong yet enough to affect a human who drank it, only one who got a direct injection. The 49 Eyed Scorpion needed a snack, and it choose the students of Annie's middle school.

Back in Anthro 332, Annie wished she could ask Aunt Gwen for help, but Aunt Gwen had died in a car accident a few months after they killed the scorpion. During Aunt Gwen's funeral, she'd held the eye in her hand, trying to affix her memories of Gwen to its surface. Now, she squeezed the eye in her first. She didn't know how or why Miko had come by his pendant, or even if it was alive, but she couldn't risk letting him keep it. She would steal it and if it was active, she would smoke out its plans and figure out what role Miko played in them.

In the meantime, she hung on every word of Miko's two-hour lecture. During the lecture, he made casual eye-contact with many students. He only looked at Annie three times.

The first two times were during his opening. He began: "For those of you freshman who begged your way into this class: take heed! This upper-level course is for serious students of anthropology and history only. The material is intricate, difficult, and often sensual or bloody or both."

On "sensual or bloody or both" he looked right at her, and paused for a heartbeat too long for dramatic effect. Annie tried to ignore the come on by focusing on how she was going to steal the necklace. She would tail him to his place and do a stake out until she had his patterns down. She would find out if he took the necklace off before bed or before he showered. She pictured him in the shower wearing nothing but the eye and soap bubbles, then shook her head. _Sidetracked!_

He continued, "There will be 250 pages of reading in a light week and closer to 500 most of the time. You will not learn to perform any magic. If you want to learn to make love potions I suggest you go to the jungle juice shop on Main Street and buy yourself something published by Llewellyn."

On "love potions" he glanced her way again.

She glared back at him. _Like I'd need a potion for that, _she thought. _On the other hand, I could use a sleeping potion. _With a sleeping potion, she could sneak into his bedroom at night and reach back around his neck to unclasp the necklace without waking him. She wondered if he slept nude, and ground her teeth to snap herself out of it. Then she started wondering if he slept alone -- maybe he had a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, or a succubus. Fortunately, he started lecturing again and she was distracted from this line of thought.

He ignored her for the rest of the lecture. She started to think she might have imagined that was attracted to her all. Nearly two hours and he hadn't spared her a glance.

Then finally, Miko wound up the lecture: "You have your reading assignments for next week. Paper topic proposals are due in two weeks." He looked at Annie and smiled broadly. "All first year students must schedule a private one-on-one during my office hours before next week's lecture to discuss paper topics and my writing requirements. Anyone who fails to do this will lose her seat in the class."

Class ended. Ursula bolted out of her seat and rushed to join a mob of students, mostly women, swarming the GSI. Annie lingered in her seat, taking the scene in from a distance. The students didn't queue up to talk to him, instead they hovered around the edge of the conversation circle until they could waddle into the center. They looked kind of like mad penguins struggling to get to the warm center. A couple of them brushed against Mikolaj, or tapped him on the shoulder, to get his focus onto them faster and more completely.

Annie got bored watching the spectacle. She surveyed the exits and entrances to the room: there were 8 doors in 4 pairs, all at the back of the room exiting into the lobby. There was no way he could slip past her. She stood up and headed for the lobby.

As soon as she made it through the doors, someone grabbed her arm and yanked her toward the building exit while yammering. "Annie-what-took-you-so-long-we'll-be-late!"

Alice. Annie was being dragged bodily across Tisch Hall by other roommate in 216 Greene. By far the prettiest of them all (at least in 216 Green), Alice Chen wore her long, straight black hair in a thousand tiny braids all braided together in two very long pigtail metabraids. She carried two messenger backs, her own and Annie's.

"Where are we going?" Annie asked, stopping in her tracks and looking back at Auditorium C regretfully.

Alice thrust Annie's messenger bag at Annie. "To Intensive Latin 199. We have four hours of class today. How could you forget that?"

_Oh right, that. _Annie, Alice, and Ursula were in a special program at the university called the Residential College. It was supposed to be a small liberal arts college within a big state university; with all the advantages of both. So far, it meant that they lived in East Quad and had to take intensive language courses for half their credits both semesters of their first year. Annie was taking Latin because it was used in all kinds of rituals and records related to the supernatural. Alice was taking Latin because she wanted to study the history of mathematics and computation, and intensive Greek wasn't offered. Ursula was taking French.

"Right then. Let's go," Annie said. "We'll catch up with Ursula later."


	4. Dead Eye Stake Out

That night, 216 Green was a full house.

The University asked new students hundreds of invasive questions and then fed the answers into a sophisticated computer algorithm that matched roommates. At orientation, one of the younger librarians had told Annie it used the same kind of technology as some online "if you like Barbie, you'll also like ken" widgets. The algorithm saw an uncanny degree of likely compatibility in Ursula, Alice, and Annie: most importantly, they all expressed a rare willingness to live in a triple.

The algorithm had done its work well: nobody requested a transfer in the first 24 hours. Yesterday, they'd arranged everything. Ursula decorated the room with planters full of herbs and played Bob Marley's greatest hits. Alice posted print-outs of the rules of the Pythagorean Cult on the walls. Annie sprinkled salt under the door and on the window ledge.

This evening, Annie lay tummy-down on her bed, scratching Latin declensions for "eye" in her big moleskin notepad: oculus, oculi, oculo, oculum, oculo. She was supposed to be declining puer, ager, and servus too, but her fingers kept wandering back to oculus. The 49th Eye. Oculus Quadrâgênsimusnônus. At least, Annie thought that was the correct ordinal for 49th.

Alice alternated between furious typing at her laptop and furious punching at the keys of her graphing calculator. She was working on a linear algebra problem set, and simultaneously chattering at 190wpm.

Theoretically, Ursula was googling possible paper topics for 332, but in reality she was using every social networking site on planet earth to check out her new classmates, and new teachers.

"Annie, Annie! Check it out. I found Miko's profile! ... And he's single!"

Urs didn't give Annie a chance to say no. She dumped her laptop in front of Annie's nose. "Will you read it? I'm too excited to focus."

Annie put down her pen and looked at the profile. It included a decent picture of Miko in graduation robe and gown. "Miko Adamczak. Profile hasn't been updated in over a year. Age 24. Single. Religion: Melkite Catholic -- I've never heard that one before. No contact info except his school email. Graduate student in the departments of anthropology and mathematics."

"Did you say math?" Alice asked, leaning backwards in her chair, into the conversation.

"Yeah, math and anthro. Pretty weird combination," Annie said.

"Hmmm..." Alice said. "I'll ask Dror about him." She tilted her chair back down and began typing again furiously.

"Dror?" Ursula asked, curious curious.

"The other linear Algebra GSI. Not mine," said Alice.

"You're IMing him?" Ursula asked, a hint of tease in her voice.

"Yes. He's also a tutor in the math lab. He's been giving me remote tutoring to help with this problem set. I just asked him about your GSI," Alice replied.

Ursula brought the conversation back to its proper focus. "Who cares what department he's in?!? Are there more pictures? Naughty pictures from his undergrad days?" She took her laptop back from Annie.

A few seconds later, Alice frowned. "Dror says that Miko isn't in the math department anymore. Miko started in the same cohort as Dror, but then he transferred to anthropology for second year. Dror says -- this is a direct quote -- 'Miko went to Jordan and smoked hashish with a batshit crazy Israeli kabbalist professor who convinced him that numbers are mystical. The whole department thought he'd lost his mind, so he switched to anthropology.' "

Ursula squeaked with excitement: "Miko's a kabbalist? Like Madonna?" Ursula began googling everything you can find on the internet about Jewish mysticism.

Annie frowned. Miko might have picked up the pendant that summer. The situation might already be dire. Annie had to start her surveillance now. But first she had to find him.

She closed her moleskin. "I'm done with declensions for tonight. Where'd you say that Math Lab was again, Alice?"

"They pointed it out to us during orientation. It's right next to Espresso Royale. You headed that way?"

"Yeah, think so. I want a red eye," Annie said.

Alice said, "I'll come with you. I want Dror. To help me. With math."

Annie packed up her messenger bag with everything she'd need. She had never staked out a person before, only buildings. For a person she figured she would need the standards: notebook, camera, video camera, coffee, muffin; but also a voice recorder, a wide-brimmed hat to cast her face in shadows, and a pair of gigantic plastic-rimmed sunglasses. She didn't want Miko to catch a fleeting glance and recognize her.

As soon as they were out of the room, Alice put a hand on Annie's shoulder. "What's up with this GSI? Why are you and Ursula so interested in him?"

"Let's walk while we talk," Annie said, moving past Alice's hand.

Annie took the morbid marble out of her pocket and started tossing it up and catching it. She needed Alice to introduce her to Dror who might have more information about Miko's whereabouts. She hadn't decided -- or even thought through -- how she would explain things to Alice. She didn't want to lie to the saner of her two new roommates, but she was going to.

Annie bit her lip. "On second thought, can I tell you about it later?"

Alice frowned intently. "I guess."

At Espresso Royale, Annie ordered a red eye with three shots of espresso.

The barista was impressed. He reached his hand across the counter, apparently looking for a handshake or high-five. Not sure what was going on, Annie offered a hand. The barista shook it.

"I'm Michael," he said. "You have to be a committed caffeine addict to be ordering a red eye on the first day of classes. I can see you're going to be coming here a lot, so I figured we better get on a first name basis."

"Thanks, I guess. I'm Annie. This is my friend Alice."

"You want drip coffee with three shots of espresso? I'll make it for you, but it's not called a red eye. See, a red eye is coffee plus one shot of espresso. A black eye is coffee plus two shots of espresso. Three shots makes it a dead eye, because it will kill the living and bring the dead back. You sure you want one?"

"A dead eye is exactly what I want." Annie grinned. He was right: she was going to need a lot of coffee. She made sure Michael saw her put a fiver in the tip jar.

Alice got two hot cocoas.

They walked the half block to East Hall. Alice lead them to the Math Lab and up to a gangly guy wearing a t-shirt with an obscure math joke. The shirt was tucked in to tight blue jeans. He was sitting behind a huge metal desk. He appeared to be wearing a grown-man sized pair of jellies, those rubbery transparent sandals favored by little girls of the 1980s. Just seeing them made Annie think of blisters past. She rolled the marble in her hand, then gave it another toss.

Dror stood up when he saw Alice coming. "Hey, Alice!"

"Hi Dror," Alice said. "This is my roommate Annie. She's the one who's got Miko as a GSI."

Dror smiled at Annie. "Hello Annie."

"We brought you hot chocolate," Alice said. She held out the extra cup.

Dror accepted it and thanked Alice, stammering: "Oh, wow, thanks. It's like I invited delivery from my own personal delivery service."

"You mean 'ordered delivery'?" Alice said, gently.

Dror slapped the side of his own head. "Right. English. Ordered is for food, invited is for friends. I'm always mixing those up." Annie didn't say anything, but Dror must have caught her puzzled look. "They're the same word in Hebrew, so it's hard to remember."

"You're not from the US?" Annie asked. She was surprised. He didn't have any noticeable accent at all. As in, he sounded like a national TV newsanchor. Annie probably had more of an accent than he did.

"I'm from Tel Aviv," he answered.

"Huh," Annie said. How weird. She tossed the marble and caught it again.

Dror watched the eye spin through the air. "What have you got in your hand?"

Annie was torn: sleight of hand to pocket the eye? or reveal it to him? She loved hiding things, but she hated a direct lie.

She unfurled her hand to reveal the eye. She told the truth: "Just an old marble."

Dror almost tripped over himself backing away. "That's the necklace Miko got from that crackpot in Jordan," he said. "Why do you have it?"

Annie's eyes twinkled. She thrust the eye under Dror's nose. "His has a bored hole for the necklace chain. Mine doesn't."

"Okay. Fine. It's not the same," he said, still not friendly.

Annie left the eye in her open palm between them. She said, "I need to find Miko, now. It's about his necklace. Do you know where he is?"

Dror shook his head.

"Does he have any friends left in the math department? I think he's in danger and I want to help him," Annie said.

Alice gasped. "What do you mean, 'in danger' ?"

Dror appraised Annie. "You're serious?"

Annie nodded.

Dror whistled. "Look, maybe I believe you. Miko said he learned the mystical applications of number theory. Mystical applications meaning big crazy magic like blowing up arms caches. I don't believe any of this shit. But! -- but a couple times, I thought I saw that necklace move on its own."

"He needs help," Annie said.

"Whatever. You really want to find him? He lived on Kingsley across from the big Catholic Church, St. Thomas. Probably still does."

Dror wrote the address on a post-it: 414 E. Kingsley.

He handed it over with the admonishment, "Remember, he's nuts about numbers. You know, just like Madonna."

Annie grinned to keep from rolling her eyes. "Thanks a bunch, Dror. I'll be sure to keep that in mind in case he starts singing anything more recent than _Like a Prayer_."

Annie walked away, still grinning. She had no idea where she was going.

Alice walked with her to the lab door. "I going to finish my problem set here. Do you know how to find Kingsley?"

"No, but I have a plan. There's this thing called the Internet. They have it now, at the computer lab," said Annie.

"Walk across the Diag to State Street. Turn right on State and keep going. Kingsley is somewhere down there. If you end up in the Huron River, you've gone too far."


	5. Hot Pursuit

Annie walked across the Diag to State Street. The clock tower rang out 10pm.

She passed local bars and chain lunch spots in the chintzy historic downtown, then emerged from the shadow of a sparkling new high-rise into the old neighborhood. Right away, the street began sloping downward toward the river.

Decorative street signs informed her that she'd entered the Kerrytown Historical District. The district was all residential, a mix of mansions and large houses converted to student apartments, and boxy three-story apartment buildings from the 1950s.

When she left downtown behind, she kept an eye out for Miko, ready with an explanation of why she was in his neighborhood: she was going to church. So far she'd seen joggers and clusters of students headed for downtown.

As she passed Catherine Street, she felt eyes upon her. A second later, she heard something walking up behind her, panting loudly and rattling. It was maybe 10 feet back and gaining on her. Annie looked at her options. The street was on her left. On her right, there was a retaining wall built of giant slabs of concrete. The wall continued from property to property, getting taller as the slope down to the river increased.

She waited until the something was bearing down on her. Then, all in one fluid series, she sidestepped to the right, scrambled onto the retaining wall, and spun to face it. It raced past without pausing, panting and rattling.

"It" was a big dog on a long leash. The leash dragged on the ground. No owner in sight.

Annie took a deep breath and laughed. But she still felt like she was being watched. Her heart started pounding and she felt her senses heighten. She heard the nearest jogger, a block back toward town, complaining into a cell phone. She felt a cool breeze lick the drop of sweat on her neck. She tasted water in the wind -- a rainstorm rolling in from the west. She took it all in, but she didn't sense anyone watching her

Still, she was sure someone or something with bright staring eyes would leap from a shadow any second. She imagined it snatching her around the waste, clapping one hand over her mouth to muffle a scream.

She shook her head to clear it, and comforted herself: _Always better this way. Get the adrenaline flowing before you really need it. Now, down to business._

She had no trouble finding Kingsley. St. Thomas's Catholic Church big as a city block and stately as a cathedral with towers, stained glass windows, and an uneven stone facade. The oldest part of the church faced Kingsley. 414 looked right at the narthex doors.

414 E. Kingsley was an old 3-story mansion. The house was a giant square with a standard sloped, singled roof and two notable features. First, the house had a fake tower: the front room on the west-side of the house had octagonal walls. A smooth sheet of roofing material emerged from each side of the octagon, sloping gently upward around 8 feet then coming together to make a point. Second, Annie could tell at a glance that the house had been converted to apartments because several wooden fire escape staircases protruded from it, all winding around toward the back of the house.

Annie liked the idea of living in the tower. She hoped Miko lived in it so that she could see the inside. She wondered how a he'd decorate. She imagined a bed placed in the center of the octagon, not touching any of the walls, and hanging above it a mobile strung with awful decorations. Glassy demon eyes in coral, silver, and gold; preserved pixies with butterfly wings; an effervescent air spirit, trapped in a flute by a jealous spouse. The mobile hanging low enough that, with a little effort, Annie could stretch her arm out from where she lay on the bed to grasp any one of the keepsakes in her hand.

She grinned. _No fantasy like reality. No time like the present._

Time for surveillance technique #1: confirm resident address.

Sunglasses and hat in place, Annie crossed the street. She went up to the porch to check out the mailboxes. There were unsecured black iron boxes. Most of them were labeled with residents' names. Annie read them overly swiftly, looking for Miko's name but also getting a sense of how many people lived in the building. She counted 14 names. One name each for 11 apartments, and one apartment with 3 names. Miko lived in apartment #32.

She opened his mailbox. Two envelopes addressed to Miko. One from St. Thomas's, the other from the Seraphim Society, which Annie had never heard of. The return address was in the University Student Union. She returned the mail to its box.

The front door was mostly glass panes, so she took a quick teak into the building. She looked down a long central hallway. All the apartments on this floor were numbered in the 10s. The third floor would be the 30s then.

Annie checked out the unpaved backyard parking lot behind the building. A one-land driveway and space for about 10 cars. The yard was fenced in, but the old fence had several gaps big enough for Annie to slip through and the driveway was open. From the back fence, she could see that the third-floor apartments had doors opening onto the fire escape stairway. The doors were numbered. The door marked 32 was directly behind the tower.

_Gotcha_. She grinned. Now to find the perfect observation deck. She looked around at the neighboring houses. The house next door, 412, was also three stories and ringed about with wooden fire stairs. The beams on the steps were thick, and the residents of one of the third floor apartments were storing bicycles on the stairs. From behind the bicycles, Annie would be nearly invisible but able to see into the tower room and the room behind it. By moving down the stairs and around a bend, she'd be able to see the #32's door.

She left 414 E. Kingsley, walked around the block a few times, and approached 412 from its backyard. Staying in the shadows, she climbed the stairs to the spot behind the bicycles. She made sure none of the residents of 412 were around, then pulled out her binoculars.

She couldn't see a damned thing. All of Miko's windows were covered in heavy drapes. No light leaked from them. He probably wasn't home, or he was already asleep. He was a lot older and grad studenty. Was it normal for grad students to be asleep at this hour?

_At 10:30? Come on, Annie!_ she snapped at herself. _He's not that much older than we are. Five, six, seven, eight years at most. We're practically the same age. He's clearly out on the town, up to no good._

Annie shrugged. One way or the other, she'd have to wait until he showed up to start tailing him, and she still couldn't shake the feeling that somebody was watching her. __

Might as well try to bore 'em to death, she thought. She pulled out her Latin homework and started declining, all the while keeping an ear open for sounds from apartment 32.

***

Annie tailed Miko in her free time for the rest of the week. She learned many useful things about the genitive case, but very little about Miko.

She went over what she knew about him again for her own benefit: Miko kept his drapes closed. He came and went on an erratic schedule. When he left, he usually went to West Hall where he attended graduate level seminars, participated in a departmental meeting, worked on some kind of cross-departmental curriculum committee with other graduate students and held his line-out-the-door mobbed office hours for Annie's class. On Wednesday night, he met up with all the faculty and grad students in the department for happy hour at Ashley's at State St. He spent a few hours studying at the international student hangout, Cafe Ambrosia.

He never took off the necklace, but sometimes he tucked it into his shirt so that only the chain showed, glittering gold sunk into his dark hair.

She hadn't gotten much sleep this week, and other than Latin, she hadn't done any homework at all. But now she knew his patterns well enough to duck out of surveillance as needed. She spent Friday afternoon doing laundry and listening to language tapes in her room.

She didn't know most of the words, but she was thoroughly enjoying chapter 14 of Commentarii de bello Gallico, Liber I -- "ita Helvetios a maioribus suis institutos esse uti obsides accipere, non dare, consuerint" (something like: "the Helvetti don't give hostages, we take them") -- when Ursula pulled Annie's ear-buds out.

"Hey!" Annie snapped, glaring at Ursula.

But Ursula looked so enthusiastic and happy that Annie's glare melted. "What's going on?" she asked.

Urs grinned. "I met a guy in pottery class who lives at Owen House. They're having a party tonight. We're going."

Annie could tell that "we" included Annie. She groaned. "Urs... I have a lot of work to do." _Besides, I want to find out what grad students do on the weekend_.

Urs pouted. Annie was about to pop her earbuds back in, when she heard Alice's voice. Surprised, Annie paused.

"You really should take a break from studying, especially Latin," Alice said. "You don't want to skew the curve high and make life hard for everybody else."

Annie heard the not so subtle threat loud and clear: _If you make everyone in the class look bad, everyone will resent you_. She sighed.

Alice, seeing that her point had registered, added, "Besides, I've heard the most interesting people turn up at this co-op parties. Drug dealers, pot heads, philosophers, _graduate students_."

"Hmm." Annie nodded appreciatively, then stuck out her tongue. "Graduate students you said? Are you perhaps referring to your private math tutor?"

Alice blushed.

"And speaking of older men, Urs, are you still hung up on our sexy GSI? Expecting to see him there tonight?" Annie asked.

Ursula blushed. Annie thought she detected fleeting hand-in-the-cookie-jar facial expression. She wondered if Urs had any real reason to believe Miko would be there.

Content, Annie asked: "When are we leaving?"

"Ten," Ursula answered.

Annie slipped her earbuds back in.


	6. If The Shoe Fits

The roommates walked down East University toward the party, mismatched triplets. Alice looked like she was out on a date: perfectly executed make-up in soft colors, a knee-length dress with a wide buckle, adorable and stylish flats. Ursula had dressed up to get the most possible attention at the party: high heeled black boots, a low-cut little black dress, and cherry red lipstick. Annie thought she might find Miko and wanted to dress appropriately for tailing him, but also wanted to look like she fit in at the party, so she'd put on supertight dark blue jeans and a plunge-back top that billowed just a bit at the bottom.

Owen House was only a few blocks from the dorm. Like almost everything else, it was a converted mansion. On the front porch, a crowd of about 20 lounged on nappy couches and the banisters. Thumping base spilled out the open front door and windows. Everyone on the porch held a big plastic cup.

Ursula led her roommates into the house, looking for her pottery classmate, Jared. Annie didn't know what the expect upon crossing the threshold, but the house overwhelmed her senses -- all five of them -- wrapping her body and mind firmly into Owen House.

Smells hit her first: mixed incense, potpourri, weed, and everywhere a hint of cooking grease. Next she noticed the walls, every one covered in vivid home-made murals. The first-floor was a series of open common rooms with chairs, coffee tables, pool tables, couches. The murals continued from room to room, unbroken. In some places, the ceiling or bookshelves or coffee tables were included in the design. The design mostly showed one element of nature blending into another: flowers, mushrooms (lots of mushrooms!), clouds, faces, mountains.

She ran a hang along a wall to touch the giant images, and found it was just little bit sticky, just little bit greasy to the touch. Every time she took a step, her boot stuck to the floor for an instant longer than normal. The band had set-up in the basement. The music shook the walls, shook the floors, making the whole place vibrate and blocking out any other sound.

Annie wasn't aware that Ursula had left them, but suddenly she returned and thrust red plastic cups into Annie and Alice's hands. "They say he's on the roof," she said. "Let's finish these and gets seconds before we go up."

Alice and Annie exchanged a look, but they both drank. Or, rather, Alice sipped uncomfortably at her drink while Annie faked chugging hers. While Ursula pestered Alice to drink faster, Annie swapped her cup for an empty one sitting on a bookshelf.

When they all had seconds in hand, they headed up the grand staircase to the third floor. Stopping every few feet to ask for directions, they made their way to a room that gave all indications of being someone's bedroom. The owner of the room had decorated it with soccer posters and trophies, which clashed hilariously with the underlying mushroom and caterpillar themed murals.

A set of pull-down stairs in the middle of the room lead up to the roof. The girls went up.

The music was much quieter and the atmosphere more sedate up here, with only a few people present, all engaged in what seemed to be a friendly argument about... phenomenology. Annie had no idea what that was. Dror was in the group, and so apparently was Jared.

Ursula walked up to a young man wearing a soccer jersey. He was fit, bald, and black. He picked Urs up and twirled her around. Annie liked him immediately.

Alice joined the conversation about phenomenology. Ursula pretended to join the conversation, but obviously had no idea what she was talking about ("Kant? Who cares about Kant?").

Annie stood with them for a few minutes, but got bored and wandered away. She lay down on the sloped roof, rough shingles providing plenty of traction to keep her in place. Most of the stars were drowned out by city lights, but there was still plenty to see in the sky. A plane moved across the horizon. The International Space Station looked almost like a planet. The moon grinned. The black shingles were still warm from today's sun bath, and the odd but not unpleasant mixture of smells from the house wafted up through the opening in the ceiling. She didn't want to participate in the strange conversation, but she enjoyed listening to their voices and zoning out to take in the world.

She doubted that Miko would show up here, so she knew she'd have to leave soon. Still, for the moment, she stretched, comfortable as a cat, letting her eyes drift open and closed at whim.

Fifteen or twenty minutes later, the conversation stuck on a point about "time" or "being" or something, Annie felt footsteps approach. She thought they belonged to Jared by the sound.

"Do you like my view?" he asked, sliding down next to her.

"So that's your room we came through?" Annie asked, ignoring the question.

He nodded.

"Do you play?" she asked, looking at his jersey.

"I did."

"You don't anymore?"

He nodded.

"So why the jersey?" she asked. "Keepsake?" Self-consciously, she reached into her pocket and checked on the 49th Eye. It was there. She turned it round and round.

"Maybe. Maybe I'll play again. Why do you keep that thing in your pocket?" he asked.

Annie froze. _He must have seen you fidgeting, that's all_. "My lip balm?" she asked innocently.

"That's funny," he said, staring at her a bit more intently than she would have liked. "I didn't know lip balm came in round and evil."

She frowned, but said, "Oh, it comes in all shapes and sizes." _And levels of evil?_ she thought to herself. _He's going to think I'm crazy whether or not he knows about the eye. _

Her fingers curled tightly around the eye. She sat up and faced him. "Did Miko send you?" she asked.

Jared leaned away from her. "Miko? The professor Ursula is hung up on?" he asked.

Annie thought she detected a bit of bitter jealousy in his voice, and found herself relaxing. She wasn't sure if or how or how much Jared knew about the eye, but she would look into those issues later. For now she would be happy just to change the subject.

"You should ask Urs out," she said. "She's never going to get Miko and I hope she knows that."

Jared was about to reply, but _speak of the devil_, Ursula started waving and shouting at the ground at that moment. "Miko! Miko!" she shouted. "Come up here -- it's the best place in the entire house!"

Annie started to make for a shadow, then stopped herself. Miko was still a couple houses down from Owen and wouldn't be able to tell who was on the roof except for Ursula shouting. And anyway, Annie had every right to be here, on the roof, flirting with an ex-soccer player.

Jared and Annie both watched Miko approach. After a few seconds, Jared asked, "That's him?"

Annie nodded.

"Now I see why you asked if he sent me," Jared said.

Annie glared at him. "What are you talking about?" she asked, pretending she hadn't actually asked him that stupid question.

"Let me show you something, Annie," he said.

He scooted around behind her.

She thought about bolting, but, as usual, curiosity got the better of caution.

Jared put his hands over her eyes. She slammed her eyes shut protectively. At the same time, she reached up and grabbed his hands in a nerve pinching hold.

"Hey!" she snapped.

He didn't remove his hands. "Shhh," he whispered, very gently. "I want to show you my view."

She didn't hear any threat in his tone. She loosened her grip, but kept her hands nearby. She plotted a trajectory to stick her thumbs in his eyes, just in case.

"Open your eyes."

She opened her eyes to pitch blackness. Then Jared slid his hands away from her eyes, keeping his fingers in contact with her temples. She saw a world transformed. The vista of Ann Arbor opened for her like an oyster with a pearl: all of its supernatural sights revealed.

In the distance, but glowing like a torch in the night, she saw a house that must be a fairy fortress. Hear and there she saw a warded door. She was surprised to see the entire 7th floor of the graduate library lit up with Egyptian style protective magic. Here and there in the student neighborhood she saw a curse or a ward, or the brief flicker of someone casting a spell or making a potent prayer.

Remembering what prompted Jared to show this to her, Annie looked down at Miko and saw him as Jared must see him. His necklace glowed poker red. It was much bigger than it normally looked, hanging around his neck like a giant chain.

Annie wanted to shout out warning to Miko -- warning that he was going to be choked, enslaved, burned. He was already burning. Wherever the necklace or pendant touched his skin, it smoldered glowing smoke.

She whirled to face Jared, wondering what he looked like in his own eyes. But the instant his fingers dropped from her temples, everything went back to normal. She felt an immediate and tremendous sense of loss. That was the world she operated in, the world she couldn't see on her own.

Annie grabbed his hands, looked deep into his eyes, shivering. "What do you see when you look at me?" she asked.

Jared rubbed her hands gently. "Shhh," he said, again gently. She let go of his hands and glanced back at Miko, expecting to continue seeing the red-hot chain. But she didn't. Miko looked confident, relaxed, headed toward the front door.

Behind her, Jared leaned toward her, his lips nearly touching her ear. He whispered, "What you've got in your pocket is dead, harmless. When I look at you, all I see is a pretty girl carrying a ghost."

"Good," she said. She stood up, started to walk toward the stairs.

Then she stopped, and asked: "How do you do it?"

"Just do. Always have," he said.

***

Annie headed downstairs. She thought she saw traces of the supernatural world throughout the house, things that glimmered and gleamed out of the corner of her eye unexpectedly. But the house was full of things that glimmered and gleamed electronically and chemiluminescently, from ancient lava lamps to Japanese lanterns illuminated by glow stick. The wall murals left tracers in your vision by design. All in all, by the time she reached the first floor she was certain that she couldn't see anything except what passed as ordinary in the co-op.

From the staircase, she could see Miko on the front porch, working his way into the house through a throng of people. When she looked at him, all she could see was her memory of the chain burning him. She could tell that he didn't realize he was in danger: he greeted his acquaintances with a smile and laughter. And though she didn't like to dwell on it, she knew that Miko wasn't the only one in danger. She was sure the Eye around his neck was making plans that would be disastrous and deadly.

The party spirit went out of her all at once. She didn't think she could fake any more, so she headed for the front door, knowing she'd pass Miko on the way, planning to ignore him.__

Don't you worry about us, Mr. Adamczak, we'll just be skulking around outside, waiting for you.

Just after she passed him, she felt a hand grasp her shoulder.

"Annie. Ursula said you might be here."

It was Miko. She could smell cinnamon and other Miko-smells over the Owen House mix. _And why does he care where I'll be? And why did Ursula tell him where I'd be?_

She wrinkled up her nose, took a breath, deliberately set her face to a nonchalant expression and turned to him.

"Annie, you haven't come to see me."

She blinked, several times, not sure what he was talking about. But then it dawned on her: _Magical mayhem aside, he IS your GSI and he said he wanted to meet with all the freshmen before next class_.

"Right, that, yes. I'll do it," she said. _Wow,_ she thought to herself, _your drunk impression is getting better every minute._

Miko shook his finger at her, obviously playfully. "Before our next class?" he asked.

"Before then," she said, not liking this game.

"Well, my weekend was full, but for you I'll make time. Let's see... Tomorrow night over dinner."

"Tomorrow... night... dinner?" Annie stumbled. He took this as acceptance, apparently. She wondered, _Literally and figuratively, where is this conversation going?_

He nodded. "I'll come for you at 7. Wear comfortable shoes."

"I always wear these," she said, dazed.

Miko looked down at her boots, nodding. He let go of her arm. "So, where's Ursula? She promised me some house punch called 'flower power' and I'm curious."

Annie pointed up. "Up on the roof," she said.

Then she stumbled out of the party, feeling like she'd drunk more than she'd intended even though she'd drunk nothing at all.


End file.
